It was, indeed, a lovely walk, except for the crappy bit on Upper Richmond Road. We saw lots of fallen leaves and blackberries clearly past their prime, little rats scampering in the undergrowth (they were cute), guys playing cricket, the rad overgrown cemetery near Putney Heath, big old fungus growing out of the side of trees, the adorable pond at the center of Barnes Common, deer kind of playing with each others antlers (not too serious yet), adorable little girls on shetland ponies, and all of the split buckeyes you could want.
shadowdaddy was sad because there weren't any salmon in the stream, but, well, so it goes. We didn't make it all the way to the end of the trail because we got a text from our friend Elliot, who had a car for the day and wanted to do something fun. So we met him at Richmond Park's Robin Hood Gate (meaning we walked 5 1/4 miles, not too shabby!) and headed off with no real goal, but wound up at Hampton Court Palace. We decided to just walk around, but through good fortune the formal gardens weren't bothering with ticket collection, so in addition to the lovely roses on the back end of the palace, we got to stroll through the gorgeous misty lawns (with the crazily shaped trees) surrounding the giant fountain with the river way extended to the gates, and then the wacky curlique ultra formal garden with lollipop trees, inverted cone bushes, filigreed lawn, and general craziness. It was very OTT and "it's good to be king."
And it was lovely and it was a nice day and everything was quite good except for my knee. We came home and met
wechsler, who'd kindly bought the ingredients for Swimming Rama. shadowdaddy cooked while I folded clothes, and afterwards we played a game of Alhambra, which I rather surprisingly won. All in all, it was a very nice day. I am enjoying fall. 